When working on CentOS systems, the grep command is your best friend for finding text patterns across multiple files. The recursive search capability is particularly useful when you don't know the exact file location.

grep -r "your_search_phrase" /path/to/search

For more comprehensive searching, combine recursive search with case-insensitive matching and line number display:

grep -rin "search_pattern" /directory/

When you only want to search through certain file types (like .conf files), combine find with grep:

find /etc/ -name "*.conf" -exec grep -l "phrase" {} \;

For developers, ack (a grep replacement) can be faster and more programmer-friendly:

ack "pattern" /path/

For complex search patterns involving regular expressions:

grep -rE "pattern1|pattern2" /path/

For large directory trees, these options can improve performance:

grep -r --include="*.php" "search" /path/
grep -r --exclude-dir={node_modules,git} "text" .

Other useful tools include:

• ripgrep (rg): Faster than grep for large codebases
• ag (The Silver Searcher): Optimized for code searching

rg "pattern" /path/
ag "pattern" /path/

When working with Linux systems like CentOS, grep is your best friend for searching text patterns. The recursive search capability is particularly useful when you need to find a specific phrase across an entire directory structure.

The simplest form of recursive search using grep:

grep -r "your_search_phrase" /path/to/search

For more precise searching, consider these enhanced commands:

# Case insensitive search
grep -ri "phrase" /path

# Show line numbers
grep -rn "phrase" /path

# Search only in files with specific extension
grep -r --include="*.conf" "phrase" /etc

For more complex scenarios, you can combine grep with find:

find /path/to/search -type f -exec grep -l "phrase" {} \;

To search within gzipped files:

find /path -name "*.gz" -exec zgrep "phrase" {} \;

For large directories, these optimizations help:

# Exclude certain directories
grep -r --exclude-dir={cache,log,tmp} "phrase" /

# Limit to readable files
find /path -readable -type f -exec grep -l "phrase" {} +

Other useful search utilities include:

# Using ack (alternative to grep)
ack "phrase" /path

# Using ripgrep (faster alternative)
rg "phrase" /path